Music to Your Ears

By Laura Marrich

Where's Jenny?—I'd been trying to contact local music promoter Jenny Gamble all week. E-mails and phone calls went unanswered and nobody had seen her around. She had, effectively, disappeared. Then one morning I found a note on my desk. “I'm leaving town. Call me. Jenny Gamble.” So I called.

Turns out Jenny was involved in a terrible accident with a semi-truck on the night of Fall Crawl. Her jeep was totaled, her skull fractured. The doctors were amazed she was able to walk away from the wreckage, let alone live. “Apparently, I have a very thick skull,” she said over the phone, joking through the pain of head trauma. She's pretty banged up, but she's going to be all right. Thank god.

So she's headed home to recover for the next six to eight weeks, which means the other side of the country, in North Carolina. Jenny says the most depressing part of this whole ordeal is having to leave her local music behind (albeit temporarily). That's so like Jenny. But she wants you to know she'll be back eventually, and she's already planning her yearly Launchpad birthday party for Jan. 5.

E-mail your well-wishes to Jenny at jennygamble@hotmail.com, or stay updated on news in North Carolina at Jenny's MySpace blog, www.myspace.com/jennygamble. We'll miss you, girl. Heal up and come home soon!

There's a New Music Zine for the Under-21 Crowd—It's called “MAP21.” The zine (which is like a homemade magazine) comes to us courtesy of MAP, a mentorship collective of volunteer creative types, under-21 musicians and their parents (hence, Musicians And Parents). Nora White of the Buddha Betties is the organizational heart of the outfit.

“It's all about the kids doing their own thing and sharing it with their parents,” she says. “[As adults,] we need to be quiet and listen to them.”

The monthly zine will include interviews with local under-21 talent, stories, art and poetry—just about anything, Nora says, as long as it has to do with music. “MAP21” also has correspondents planted in Austin and Seattle, reporting on the often overlooked booze-free music happenings of both cities.

You can learn more about the new zine and the MAP collective at their first zine assembly party this Sunday, Sept. 10, from 2-3 p.m. at the Blue Dragon (1517 Girard NE, 268-5159). If you miss the launch party, you can still pick up copies of “MAP21” at the Heights Community Center (where MAP meets every Tuesday afternoon) and the Blue Dragon Coffee House. For more information about both projects, e-mail Nora at buddhabetties@hotmail.com.

Peace, Justice and Art Rock—Boston's Neptune (neptuneband.com) will play an all-ages show at the Peace and Justice Center (202 Harvard SE) on Friday. The 8:30 p.m show will put you out all of five bucks, which leaves you with plenty of time and money to hit the bars afterwards. You'll be sad if you miss this. Just go.